Kenya has emerged as one of the three main centres of artificial intelligence (AI) activity in sub-Saharan Africa, but businesses and government agencies are still largely using basic tools rather than deploying the new technology at scale.
The World Bank’s latest Africa Economic Update places Kenya alongside Nigeria and South Africa as the region’s leading AI activity hubs, accounting for much of its innovation ecosystem, venture capital investment, and research output.
The finding puts Kenya at the centre of Africa’s emerging AI economy even as the country faces a gap between widespread experimentation with the technology and its deeper integration into business operations and public services.
‘AI activity is heavily concentrated in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, which account for much of the region’s innovation ecosystem,’ the World Bank says in its October 2026 update.
The report, however, says most African economies remain in the early ‘adopt’ and ‘adapt’ stages, relying mainly on ready-made AI products or modifying existing systems for local needs rather than developing frontier technologies.
‘Although firm-level evidence points to widespread uptake of AI technologies, deployment of more sophisticated applications remains limited and uneven,’ it notes.
Among firms with at least 20 employees surveyed in Kenya and Nigeria, 44 percent reported using AI technologies, compared with 61 percent among surveyed US firms, highlighting the adoption gap between African businesses and those in advanced economies.
Even among firms using AI, the depth of deployment remains limited, with only 36 percent of AI-using firms in the surveyed developing countries applying more sophisticated uses such as AI agents or automation, compared with 56 percent in the United States.
The gap suggests that Kenyan companies are increasingly experimenting with AI, but many have yet to move from using chatbots and generative AI for routine work to embedding the technology in core production and decision-making systems.
The World Bank says firms surveyed in Kenya and Nigeria are mainly using basic AI tools such as AI chatbots and generative AI, while more sophisticated applications remain limited and uneven across businesses.
For smaller enterprises, the challenge is even greater, with only 13 percent of small firms in the countries examined having introduced process innovations in the previous three years and just 35 percent having a basic web presence.
The World Bank says AI could add as much as $1 trillion (about Sh130 trillion) to Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035 under an ambitious scenario in which countries close major gaps in data, computing capacity, skills, trust and capital.
Under current preparedness levels, however, AI integration across Sub-Saharan Africa could add only 0.2 percentage point to cumulative GDP over the next decade, rising to as much as four percent under broader and faster adoption.
The warning comes as Kenya seeks to turn its existing technology base into a larger source of productivity, jobs and investment through the National AI strategy 2025-2030.
The strategy, launched in March 2025, identifies AI digital infrastructure, data and AI governance, as well as AI research, innovation and commercialisation as its three main pillars.
The government has since shifted attention towards implementation, with the ICT ministry saying in September that the focus should move from policy development to measurable gains in productivity, jobs, enterprise growth and public services.
The World Bank report shows that public-sector AI adoption is also still at an early stage, with governments using the technology more frequently for chatbots and virtual assistants responding to public queries, followed by workflow automation and knowledge management.
AI applications for direct service delivery to citizens and support for frontline public workers rank lower than in high-income and upper-middle-income economies, leaving a large opportunity for governments to use the technology beyond administrative functions.
Across 15 sub-Saharan African countries surveyed by the World Bank, 90.8 percent of AI systems identified through government procurement records supported internal functions, while 88.9 percent relied on predictive or optimisation models and only 1.4 percent used generative AI.
Only three of the 15 digital agencies surveyed had provided enterprise generative-AI licences to civil servants, further underscoring how far public institutions remain from widespread AI deployment.
The World Bank estimates that the near-term automation risk in sub-Saharan Africa is 2.6 percent of jobs, against 14.2 percent in high-income economies, while the potential for AI to augment workers is considerably higher at 15.2 percent.
The report notes that outside agriculture, 53 percent of Kenyan women are in occupations exposed to AI compared with 38 percent of men, while more than one-third of higher-income workers could potentially be assisted by AI compared with only four percent in the lowest income quintile.
The World Bank cautions against an African race to build expensive frontier AI models, arguing that the bigger near-term opportunity lies in adopting and adapting affordable tools that solve specific local problems.
‘Most near-term opportunities come from task-specific applications embedded in existing workflows rather than from frontier innovation,’ says the multilateral lender in the report.
‘Observed patterns of use also point to augmentation as the more relevant development channel in the near term.’
Kenya currently faces infrastructure constraints that could limit the next phase of adoption, including unreliable electricity, costly devices and data and shortages of AI-related skills.
Africa has 18 percent of the world’s population but only 0.6 percent of global data-centre capacity, while only about five percent of African data centres are considered AI-ready, according to the World Bank.
The Bank says regional cooperation will be critical, particularly in building shared computing infrastructure, interoperable data systems, harmonised regulations and larger markets for AI-enabled products.
The World Bank’s latest economic outlook projects Sub-Saharan Africa’s growth to rise from 4.1 percent in 2025 to 4.3 percent in 2026, but warns that this pace remains insufficient to create enough jobs for the region’s rapidly expanding workforce.